CYTENA, a BICO group company (Nasdaq Stockholm: BICO) and a leading provider of high-precision instruments for handling biological cells, has entered a collaboration agreement with ExcellGene SA, a leading biologics CDMO that manufactures recombinant proteins. Together, the companies will streamline cell line development workflows for highly-efficient monoclonal antibody (mAb) and complex therapeutic protein manufacturing which enables important improvements to the development workflows of the biopharmaceutical industry. As part of the collaboration, ExcellGene is providing its high-performance CHOExpress® system, a proven, high-yield mammalian host cell line for large-scale manufacturing of therapeutic proteins. CYTENA will establish workflows on the new C.STATION™ – a next generation automated workstation for Cell Line Development. First C.STATIONs will be installed at CYTENA’s biopharmaceutical customers within the next months and delivering already improved workflows with the C.STATION will lead to an even higher demand for this fully automated solution in therapeutic protein manufacturing.

“I am thrilled to announce this exciting collaboration,” said Dr. Julian Riba, CEO of CYTENA. “This will allow us to establish more efficient protocols for stable CHO Cell Line Development (CLD) on our new platform. And it brings us one step further in our mission to make the production of biotherapeutic proteins faster, safer, and more affordable.”

Fully automated cell line development (CLD) from cloning single cells to the selection of high-producing clones for upscaling, has long been a goal of Contract Development & Manufacturing Organizations (CDMO) like ExcellGene. CYTENA now offers a next-generation CLD platform for reducing timelines, eliminating contamination and improving cell viability in all-in-one intuitive workstation.

Prof. Florian Wurm, CSO and Co-founder of ExcellGene, states: “Having worked with several CYTENA cell handling tools from the earliest days of their offerings, we were pleased to see innovative and well thought-through instrumentation, including a flow of innovative concepts aiming at addressing a major bottleneck in the development of biologics using cultivated animal cells: the proof of monoclonality.”

Dr. Stéphanie Anchisi, Head of Cell Line Development and senior scientist at ExcellGene added: “We have generated thousands of clonal cell lines using CYTENA’s technology and found it very reliable, providing both single-cell isolation and image-based proof of monoclonality”. 

Dr. Florian Wurm continued “Dr. Maria Wurm, CEO of ExcellGene, and I hold a deeply reflected view on the issue of monoclonality, related to the very nature of CHO cell substrates, as indicated in some of our publications. We fully respect regulatory requirements and constraints, and in our view the new C.STATION promises to be among the most suitable and regulatory-friendly products in the market today. We are happy to provide CYTENA access to our high yielding CHOExpress® derived pools and clonal cell populations for optimization of protocols in efficient use of the new line of instrumentation, and thus we wish to solidify our lead in science-based cell line and process development for our clients.”